Time Capsule - 5 items

[Beef Oven!]

Before we finally destroy this beautiful planet that we live on, we should place a number of items in a time capsule and leave it on the moon, for future space-travellers to find and understand what we were like.

IMV, the items should place an emphasis on how sophisticated we were, and not focus on the negatives.

What five items do you think should be included?

My list:

1) The rules of Association Football
2) A DVD of a performance of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'
3) A copy of George and Weedon Grossmith's 'Diary Of A Nobody'
4) A saveloy
5) A CD-Rom of Bach's piano works plus the sheet music.

[Tony Halstead]

Bach's piano works

That would be Johann Christian Bach's piano works, then?

[Beef Oven!]

That would be Johann Christian Bach's piano works, then?

Once they see the rules of association football, they'd be so amazed, setting up their own inter-galactic leagues, practicing penalties etc, that nothing else would matter.

But since you ask, Bach is JS, all the rest have initials.

[richardfinegold]

Presumably, if we destroy the Planet, then the Moon would also be endangered, having nothing else to orbit around.

My List:
1) One Hard Drive with the Complete works of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy and Mahler
2) A DVD of Dr Strangelove (it may provide a clue as to what happened to the Planet, besides it's Artistic Value)
3) An e reader loaded with the complete works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Sherlock Homes, Thomas Mann, and Elmore Leonard.
4) A Michael Jordan highlight film
5) A DVD with VAn Gogh's paintings juxtaposed with scenes from a beautiful summer day in Provence.

[Beef Oven!]

Presumably, if we destroy the Planet, then the Moon would also be endangered, having nothing else to orbit around.

That had occurred to me, but we must not take the OP too literally!

Btw, love the Dr Strangelove inclusion!

[vinteuil]

The score of Die Kunst der Fuge

The film Céline and Julie Go Boating [Céline et Julie vont en bateau] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine_...lie_Go_Boating

The Vermeer The Artist's Studio currently in Vienna * : http://www.vermeer-foundation.org/Th...udio-1665.html

The Essais of Montaigne

"The boxed Pléiade set of À la recherche du temps perdu (the three-volume edition of 1954, with the silly foreword by André Maurois, rather than the portentous, over-annotated and illogically divided four-volume edition of 1987)." [with thanks to John Lanchester]


* originally I had thought of Piero della Francesca's Resurrection at San Sepolcro : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Res...lla_Francesca) - but it's a fresco, and wd be tricky to move...




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[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

We may very well destroy our own and several other species, but the planet would be more resilient. For the visitors from other planets - and/or whatever species evolves from whatever catastrophe we create:

1) The Eton Choirbooks
2) Das Lied von der Erde Patzak,Ferrier,Walter/VPO
3) The complete works of Shakespeare (if they've evolved the technology to access this stuff, they'll be able to read it)
3) The National Gallery and its contents
4) Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

... and, after all this, to explain how we ended up as we did*:

5) Mein Kampff

What will they make of us?

*EDIT: I've just noticed the "don't focus on the negative" bit. In which case I'm delighted to replace the toxic clown's vile bilge with the scores of Mozart's String Quintets. Let the visitors work it out for themselves!

[Serial_Apologist]

I would leave a lump of cream cheese - a very large lump, just to confuse any future geologists ... ... from another planet.

[umslopogaas]

Only one f in Kampf, fferney.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Only one f in Kampf, fferney.

And one f in idiot who shoulda checked!


Reading S_A's cream cheese, I think I might exchange my Newton for a bottle of 16 year-old Lagavulin. (Any visitors discovering the Time Capsule will be able to work out that, if our species had worked out how to produce this, they'd've found Newtonian Physics a doddle.)

[Flosshilde]

All very Western, don't you think? Perhaps Ghandi's response to the question about Western civilisation ("It would be a good idea.") should be included, plus evidence of the development of science in Islamic civilisation (rather in advance of ours) and, well, almost anything from China; porcelain from the Han dynasty for example.

[Serial_Apologist]

All very Western, don't you think? Perhaps Ghandi's response to the question about Western civilisation ("It would be a good idea.") should be included, plus evidence of the development of science in Islamic civilisation (rather in advance of ours) and, well, almost anything from China; porcelain from the Han dynasty for example.

Or mead from Margaret.

[umslopogaas]

Oh Floss, this is fine stuff but consider. The glories of the ancient civilisations, the beauty of Chinese porcelain and the precision of Islamic water clocks are all very well and fine and beautiful, but what little we know of the life of the artisans who created these wonders doesnt exactly cause me to admire the management that allowed their fantastic achievements. After all, I'd probably work quite hard to make a nice bit of porcelain or a functioning water clock if I was told I'd have my fingernails torn out one by one with red hot pliers if I failed. And I'd have thought myself lucky they'd agreed to leave me my toenails. Personally, the only good thing I can say about ancient so-called civilisations is that I wasnt called to live in one, because civilised, they were not.

[Flosshilde]

Hmm - now, what was Western civilisation doing around the time of the Han Dynasty? Oh yes - the supposed pinacle of it was busy nailing someone to a cross, & then later burned people because of their religion (a practice that continued for some half a millennium or more). And one of the most civilised, tolerant communities in the West was Moorish (ie Islamic) Southern Spain. Until those enlightened monarchs, Ferdinand & Isabella, forced Muslims & Jews to convert to Christianity, with a little torture to persuade them.

[Beef Oven!]

And one f in idiot who shoulda checked!


Reading S_A's cream cheese, I think I might exchange my Newton for a bottle of 16 year-old Lagavulin.

You are Michael Jackson! He's alive! I knew he'd never leave us!!!